Hey guys, I'm creating a website for a client who happens to be a family member (which I swore to never do) and as such I didn't have the full details at the beginning of the project.

It's sort of like craigslist, and I decided to do the website in CodeIgniter, and was able to knock out the majority of the website fairly quickly, however there was something I wasn't made aware of, the client wants to put a system in place to allow purchasing the right of posting listings in a certain area.

The website does not have an SSL certificate, and I want to steer clear of doing transactions on the actual website, because due to it's name I can guarantee you not many in the right mind would be willing to put their credit card number into the site.

I normally never dabble into e-commerce outside of some magento related work at my job. So my goto was paypal, buttons are out of the question since there are different packages of listings you can buy, so I need information to be returned so I can update the database with the correct info for that user. I happened to use the express checkout - which works flawlessly, the user can pay with paypal, or they can enter their CC number into the paypal website pop-up, and there's no monthly fee! The only snafu is the user needs a paypal account to use their credit card. This is what the client wants to avoid, he wants anyone to be able to enter their credit card. I've read up on paypals website for a while, and decided to check if anyone has any advice.

So bottom line: No monthly fee (preferred, per transaction is fine), transaction done on THEIR website, any user to enter a credit card number w/o having an account. (It may be a complete stretch, just checking).

Thanks for reading the wall of text, and I appreciate any advice!

AnthonySterling
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2011-04-03T16:42:57Z —
#2

PayPal no longer requires the payee to have a PayPal account*, although they do imply it.

Your customers are taken to payment pages on the secure PayPal site. To pay by credit or debit card, they fill out the easy payment form. If they prefer to pay using PayPal, they log in to their PayPal account and pay in as few as three clicks.

*Website Payments Standard

Zurev
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2011-04-03T17:16:22Z —
#3

Thanks for the quick response, I was looking at that however it seems to be more of the button situation, where they pay, and you can can choose where they get sent back afterwards. As I said I need information afterwards for example what exactly they bought, I think this is what I'm looking for, towards the bottom. Thoughts?

AnthonySterling
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2011-04-03T17:28:07Z —
#4

Can you not create and save a shopping cart on your end, then use IPN to log/track/validate the purchase?

Zurev
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2011-04-03T17:35:19Z —
#5

I kind of threw the idea of a shopping cart out, since you can only buy one digital product at a time (ie: buy a listing, buy 3 listings, buy 5 listings) I thought it was a waste.

AnthonySterling
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2011-04-03T17:47:07Z —
#6

It doesn't have to be cart per se, consider it a transaction then.

Zurev
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2011-04-03T18:18:14Z —
#7

I actually think I was able to figure it out, after more searching (paypals documentation is difficult to figure out considering they have x.com for it as well) - though in the depths I found a parameter for a button: "notify_url: The URL to which PayPal posts information about the transaction, in the form of Instant Payment Notification messages."

Assuming I can have it notify to a page of my own that wittles down the response to what I need, and updates the database accordingly. It's a win.